Report: PS4 reserves 3.5GB of RAM for the OS

Nearly half of the PlayStation 4's onboard RAM is reserved for the console's operating system, according to a report from the hardware sleuths at Digital Foundry. Sony documents supposedly reveal that 3.5 gigs of RAM are dedicated to functions of the PS4's streaming-friendly OS, leaving 4.5 gigs for video games to use exclusively.

"Sources close to Sony," however, indicate that it may be possible for developers to requisition up to one additional gig of space, provided the operating system can spare it at the time. This may also be a luxury most easily used by first-party developers during the early life of the console.

This places the PlayStation 4's off-limits memory allotment within shouting distance of the Xbox One's, which is said to be three gigabytes. Both consoles ship with eight gigs in total, though the type of RAM installed in each console does vary: faster GDDR5 in the PS4, and DDR3 in the Xbox One. For comparison, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 each have 512 megs of RAM, because they were hewn from driftwood by cave people in the days before time.